In Canada, a Case of the Missing U.S. Exports

It has been one of the big mysteries of Canada’s economic recovery: roughly 50 billion Canadian dollars ($46.58 billion) of exports, mostly to the U.S., have gone missing.

When the U.S. recovery started to pick up steam, Canadian economists expected nonenergy exports to the U.S., which accounted for three-quarters of Canada’s C$480 billion in annual exports last year, would rebound as well. If Canada’s sales of goods ranging from auto parts to oats had behaved as economists had expected, they would have rebounded by an additional C$40 to C$50 billion.

But that didn’t happen, and instead, economists at the Bank of Canada and elsewhere have been left wondering what happened to the missing sales of Canadian goods to the U.S.

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